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Comment by sbierwagen | Hacker News Reader

Fun historical fact, at the height of WW1, Germany was producing 12 million shells a month. Just in the preliminary bombardment at the Battle of the Somme the British fired 1.5 million shells. And now we're scrambling just to achieve one percent of the production we had a century ago.

All that industrial base is long gone, of course. Contrary to complaints about war profiteering, artillery shell production is not a terribly attractive business. The equipment can't easily be repurposed, it's not terribly sophisticated so the technological barriers to entry are low, you have one single customer, and the faster and better you provide your product the quicker the war ends and you go out of business. It's like combining the low margins and drudgery of running a factory that stamps out spoons, but with the added risk the spoons might obliterate the plant if a single worker makes a mistake.

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I wonder if it's fair to call the hodgepodge of localized wars WW3 now? It's clear one alliance - Ukraine, Europe, US, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Australia, Canada, Israel (recently aligned with Ukraine) - is fighting another alliance - Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Hamas, Houthi. With countries supplying technology, money, military stockpiles, and in some ways, foot on the ground. With India trying to play both sides, via purchasing Russian oil, but involved in Aukus.

Wikipedia defines a world war as an international conflict that involves most or all of the world's major powers. Times magazine said "two major power blocs of countries fighting for dominance, with numerous nations on each side taking up arms against each other in more than one theater" [1]

[1] https://time.com/6336897/israel-war-gaza-world-war-iii/

I'd think a world War needs to be hot, not proxy.

is the war still proxy, if the participants send machines (drones, tanks, missile systems) to the battlefields on each side instead of humans? Maybe this is the first post-human world war

> Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Hamas, Houthi

China is the odd man out in this list. China is emphatically not a friend of Russia. Official CCP policy is that Russia stole Outer Manchuria from China in the aftermath of the Opium Wars of the 1850s. Russia is in fact the only country that still holds on to territory gained from the Qing via the Unequal Treaties.

If China ever arms enough to attempt to retake Taiwan (which is highly plausible before the end of the decade; 2027 is the current aim), Outer Manchuria--including Vladivostok, Russia's most strategically important port--will be the next target.

In the meantime, China is happy to hold Putin over the barrel and wring out Russian exports for bargain-bin prices. Russia is already a Chinese client state, even if it doesn't know it yet.

Not sure if you saw my original posting, the thread you're writing in. China is definitely a friend of Russia. On top of what I mentioned, China is the top buyer of Russian oil, and thus its major financial partner. And China just recently said relations with Moscow are at an historic high [1]

[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/28/china-lauds-russia-...

> China just recently said relations with Moscow are at an historic high

Yes, and the scorpion promises the frog that it won't sting. Politicians can say what they please, the actions of the state speak louder:

https://www.newsweek.com/china-map-borders-territory-dispute...

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-andrey-rudenko-responds-chin...

China will continue economically plundering Russia so long as it's in their favor; the Western sanctions mean that Putin's options for oil exports are limited.

Arguable destabilizing NATO has some significant advantages in whatever eventual aims China has towards Taiwan.

China benefits from destabilizing the US, but NATO in general does not concern China, because, unlike Russia, China doesn't have its sights set on conquering Europe. If anything China would have preferred that Russia didn't invade Ukraine, because it's (slowly, slowly, slowly) putting the US on a war footing and eroding the advantage in inertia that China currently possesses over the US. Fortunately for China, Congress includes enough Russian assets that the resulting political deadlock seems likely to continue paralyzing the US, to China's benefit. If the US doesn't miraculously turn around its legislative (and, potentially soon, its executive) obstructionism, then Taiwan will probably fall to China, regardless of the intervention of the US and its allies (with the only hope for Taiwan being a sudden onset of incompetence from the Chinese military).

> China benefits from destabilizing the US,

Does it? A destabilized and broke US can't buy as many goods from China as a rich and powerful one, even if there are other advantages/disadvantages to be had.

The CCP purposefully subsidizes its own industries to the point of economic lunacy specifically to destroy the domestic industries of other countries, and thereby make them dependent on Chinese exports (yes, this is the famous venture capital model of "subsidize the service until we have a monopoly and then jack the prices to the moon", but applied to geopolitics). They have plenty of headroom (and a huge domestic market) to pivot away from an export-focused economy while still gripping the rest of the world by the balls for at least a few decades.

China spends a lot of diplomatic breath on NATO not because NATO is a direct threat, but because it wants to discredit the concept of defence treaty organisations, especially within and standing against the aspired spheres of influence of great powers. A South China Sea NATO lookalike is a major nightmare, and if NATO proper is discredited the odds of that fall dramatically. If the US is seen to fink out on Estonia or whatever, the geopolitical calculations in the Philippines change dramatically.

True, but I think it's unlikely that Putin will test article 5 by invading the Baltics before China attacks Taiwan (if anything, the invasion of Taiwan is Putin's best chance of establishing a land bridge to Kaliningrad; without the US's complete attention, NATO's ability to break a Russian blockade in the Baltic Sea is bleak). And once China has Taiwan and a secured route to the Pacific, it doesn't need to care nearly as much whether or not the rest of its neighbors are militarily aligned.

Right but territory disputes (without actual fighting) are also just political speaks. Money and military supplies from China to Russia speak louder than political speaks - even without some of the Chinese bank settlements, China is still the main funder of Russia's war

Alliances and friendship are orthogonal. An alliance is a pragmatic short-term matter. Friendship is something more fundamental and typically lasts longer.

Germany and the USSR were almost allies during the early years of WW2. The Soviets supplied Germany with massive amounts of raw materials, helping them to circumvent the British blockade. There were even serious talks on the USSR formally joining the Axis powers. The talks ultimately failed, as Germany and the USSR could not agree on their spheres of influence in the south.

Then the war between Germany and the USSR broke out, and Cold War followed after the war. All these changes happened in less than a decade.

China and Russia haven’t fought a border clash since the 1990s. But they are mire frenemies than friends, both fear each other because they share such a huge border and don’t have a very peaceful past, but they can be friends when both are threatened by the USA.

2027 is the current aim

That's what some say. But how do you know?

Outer Manchuria - including Vladivostok - will be the next target.

Very unlikely, even if Taiwan collapses quickly.

2027 is the target that both China and the US have projected for the invasion of Taiwan. Whether it will actually come to pass, who can say, but this is the timeframe that military planners are using to procure equipment today.

> Very unlikely, even if Taiwan collapses quickly.

Indeed, it won't be easy for China to take Taiwan. But modern US power projection is accustomed to using overwhelming force against weak adversaries; the US hasn't had a peer conflict in decades. I give the advantage to China because of geography: it will be easier for China to project power into Taiwan than it will be for the US to project power across the pacific. China knows that carriers and a known number of fixed airfields in allied nations are the weak links. And if China takes Taiwan it will result in the greatest outpouring of Chinese nationalist fervor in our lifetimes, and there's no chance that the newly-triumphant military will want to sit on its laurels when it could be asserting China's new status on the world stage by turning its revanchism towards Russia.

2027 is the target that both China and the US have projected for the invasion of Taiwan

The US has not released a definitive assessment. Jinping apparently did make some announcement that the PLA should be "ready to" invade Taiwan, but that's not the same as "is going to." And may just be propaganda for the PLA's 100th anniversary.

> China is emphatically not a friend of Russia.

China seems to be manufacturing drones for Russia these days, which puts them in a very specific light.

Chinese arms and tech dealers are pretty open about who they trade with. Although I can’t imagine that they are trading without at least tacit approval from the CPC.

> Chinese arms and tech dealers are pretty open about who they trade with.

Are you meaning it should be excused or discounted?

And yeah, it's impossible the CCP wouldn't be involved in some way.

Those manufacturers are literally creating military weapons.

This sort of feels like the "how do we define a recession" debate. You can establish some guidelines, but I think there's also a sort of "I'll know it when I see it" qualitative type judgement too. I'd say if you can still make lots of money writing apps for scheduling dog massages and aren't persuaded to go pick up a rifle or work an ammunition press, we're still a ways off from a real world war.

Ukraine has implemented a draft, but software developer is still a highly paid position there. Many other countries have compulsory military service. So that really depends on your perspective. The US is different due to its power and geography. The draft in the US was hugely unpopular, so is likely but going to happen again, at which point, by that definition, we'll never get there. But, like you said, "I'll know it when I see it."

The world wars were also about Total War.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_war

We definitely seem to be in a build up to a possible total world war.

But this might be more like Hitler's invasion of Poland than full blown world war.

As in the pre-skirmishes.

Perhaps the prelude to world war, but not yet full blown...

> I wonder if it's fair to call the hodgepodge of localized wars WW3 now?

No. It would take direct nuclear strikes between major powers and hundreds of millions in casualties for anything to be called ww3. Would you call the korean war ww3? How about the vietnam war? Or any of the dozens of wars since ww2?

> It's clear one alliance - Ukraine, Europe, US, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Australia, Canada, Israel (recently aligned with Ukraine)

The only alliance is between the US, UK, Canada, Australia and NZ. Countries with shared linguistic, cultural, religious and historical heritage. Israel is more of an enemy than an ally as they sell stolen tech to china and russia and are culturally, historically and religiously alien to the US and the anglosphere.

Also, you might want to read the history of what the US did to japan, korea, taiwan, philippines, etc if you think that 'alliance' really exists. Even better, you might want to read the history of their rivalries between each other.

There is a reason why we are moving chip production away from taiwan and ship building from sk and japan.

> Times magazine said "two major power blocs of countries fighting for dominance

Never take nonsense you read in media seriously.

depends on the type of shell, e.g. this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M982_Excalibur is probably a bit sofisticated..

Wars between developed states, who can more easily afford this stuff, are gradually becoming (have become?) a thing of past, and thank goodness.

> you have one single customer

Who has no credit limit and is willing to spend like their life depends on it. That's what makes war profiteering so profitable.

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